Original title: Trauma and PTSD in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys
The surveys asked people in 24 countries about 29 kinds of trauma. They assessed PTSDPost-traumatic stress disorder: a mental health condition that can develop after trauma and involve lasting symptoms. linked to both each person’s worst trauma and a randomly chosen trauma, adjusting for how many traumas each person had experienced. PTSD risk differed much more between trauma types than the chance of symptoms continuing. Rare events such as rape carried high risk, while the common death of a loved one added many years of PTSD symptoms across the population.
Imagine a town trying to decide which household problem causes the most days of disruption. A rare burst pipe may cause a lot of trouble in each home it hits, while a common power cut causes less trouble per home but affects many more homes. In this paper, the burst pipe stands for a trauma with high PTSD risk, and the power cut for a common trauma with lower risk; the overall burden depends on how often each happens and how long its effects last.
For people affected by trauma and the services that support them, the findings show that PTSD burden depends on both how often a trauma happens and the risk and duration of PTSD after it. Interpersonal violence carries especially high risk, while common events can contribute many cases even when individual risk is lower.
The abstract does not establish why trauma types differ in PTSD risk, or that the findings apply beyond the surveyed populations and measures. It reports associations, not proof that a trauma type causes PTSD. It also does not describe specific interventions or whether they reduce PTSD.
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Trauma and PTSD in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys — Ronald C. Kessler, Sergio Aguilar‐Gaxiola, Jordi Alonso et al. — European Journal of Psychotraumatology — doi:10.1080/20008198.2017.1353383
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.